E-HEALTH - E-SANTE - PHARMAGEEK

In case you haven’t heard: Samsung is now a pharmaceutical company, or at least on the point of becoming one. Subsequent to its having invested at least $2b in biopharmaceuticals, the South Korean giant will be bringing a biosimilar version of Amgen’s Enbrel to market in 2016.

That’s right.

In 2016, a company best known for its consumer electronics and heavily invested in mobile health is going to start producing pharmaceuticals, and will apparently begin by bringing a treatment to market which will presumably make it a dominant force overnight in the two disease areas in which Enbrel has indications, namely moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriatic arthritis.

The implications of this for legacy pharmaceutical companies are wide-reaching and significant. Let’s consider a few of them (I anticipate updating this post over the next few months):

- Samsung now has more touch points across the health ecosystem than any other pharmaceutical company. ...

- Samsung’s total focus on customer experience and design makes it a credible champion of the participatory patient’s interests. ...

- Hundreds of millions of people carry this pharmaceutical company’s brand with them day and night. ...

- Consumers will think of Samsung as a consumer electronics company that makes pharmaceuticals. ...

- Samsung will be the first consumer technology company to enter the pharmaceutical marketplace, but it will not be the last.

If this thought doesn’t focus legacy pharmaceutical companies into throwing everything they have into reforming themselves as social business, nothing will. The survival of even the largest companies is far from certain when giants such as Samsung have set their sights upon entering the industry.

Samsung doesn’t think like a pharmaceutical company.

Pharmaceutical companies better start thinking like Samsung.

Health care is very much „in transition”. Have a quick look at the trends in health care 2014 . Now, try to predict what the outcomes will be of all these well intended developments?
Due to changes in structure of processes, organizations, patients’ journeys, devices, drugs, apps, telemonitoring – health care will run the risk of becoming highly fragmented, maybe even chaotic. Let’s hope that professionals and their patients still do know their way around.

Can this be prevented? As costs will drive change for the coming years, I guess not. Health care is fundamentally being transformed. Why? Because it has been righteously disrupted and it will take time before a new satisfactory system has emerged. Do we need to wait for that? No! We have to see how we can construe things in a more informed perspective. ..

..there is a sure direction to give that constitutes the basic principle for moving forward: both because it is immanent to all needed developments to better care, and because it creates the opportunity to developments in oversee-able steps of change. Every party can draw its own choice on this to design a proper blue print to their process of change.

This principle directive is: Integrate, integrate, integrate.

Integration in care is about the unification of both parties and activities, aided by technology, devices, information and medications, to create better care for health and its outcomes.
Integration will lead to better connections of different partners who are needed for a specific path or process of care. It will stimulate collaboration and coordination of activities between them. They will aim for better outcomes and higher effectiveness of care. It will lead to opportunities for more efficient arrangements of expertise and allocation of capacity of care givers.
With the compound of the interests of the key players in care (and I mean of course, patients included), costs can be more rationally arranged and may lead to lowering prices of care per patient per year. Also, it will inspire higher transparency of processes and clarity to patients about details of the caring activities themselves.

There are three different kinds of integration. Each, open to start with. So, any party may pick and start its own game changer. Even any couple of parties as intended partners, may do so too. Choose the most easiest entry to your future development together and enjoy the ride!

1. Integration by Co-Operation
2. Integration by Co-Creation. 3. Integration by “Experience Co-Creation”.

..

Chooses Yale to act as independent trial data request review body

In this post, using the topic of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as an example, Marie-Claire Wilson outlines some of the most commonly-seen behaviours of HCPs online, giving an insight...

The UK government's plans to introduce a new system of drug pricing that takes into account the wider value of a new medicine is neither in the patient interest nor national interest, according to a leading healthcare think-tank.

2020health said it approached the subject from the patient's perspective and concluded that the current PPRS system for drug reimbursement has kept UK medicine prices below the average in advanced countries and also supported R&D.

However, if the government goes ahead with a planned 2014 switch to value-based pricing (VBP) – which would take into account wider societal benefit, extended cost savings and the medical value of a drug to different patients – it could harm both access to drugs in the UK and the country's research environment...

..

Its other recommended changes to the current pricing system include lowering the price of older drugs so that companies are given the leeway to sell new medicines at a higher price, while bonuses should be offered to companies marketing drugs for less common conditions.

Go to the site of PMlive to collect the report!

File this under ‘sad irony.’ Now that the pharmaceutical industry has tossed thousands of people overboard during the last decade – an estimated 150,000 or so just since 2009 – a slight majority of drugmakers complain that it has become increasingly difficult to find the right talent and most worry they will not have access to the people they need to hire, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. (...) - By Ed Silverman, Pharmalot, February 5th, 2013